How many novels does it take to give up your day job?

The writers I know who make their living from writing books are typically putting out 3-5 a year. It's not a matter of past production as much as what is in the pipeline. Even successful writers typically just about break even or 'earn out' and not substantially more (in part due to the trend of taking books out of print so quickly; backlist royalties don't account for a huge part of income for many much-published authors).

I agree with the posters who've said it's largely about hard work. The talent may get the door open, but to pay the bills you need to be a writing machine.

IceCreamEmpress said:

A combination of careful planning, hard work, clear-headed risk assessment, intelligent strategizing, and luck are necessary for success.

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... very true. I'm only good at the second, myself, similar to a draft horse. Will have to work on the others. Have always sensed I'm lacking in those departments. If I had the loot I'd higher someone to do the planning and strategizing for me.

ps You've all raised some good points. Combined together they really cover all the bases.

kal-el said:

Really? But say if you are really talented and your first book does very well, however you can't write fast enough for the satisfaction of your publisher? Wouldn't they just wait for you if they knew how good you are?

Is time really that essential for a great writer?

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It's quite simple if you want to write full-time: no writing = no money.

If you don't write (and sell), you don't eat.

kal-el said:

I figured that, and it makes perfect sense. But would a publisher drop you because you were taking too long? Even if they have published your work before and done very well out of it?

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In a word, yes.

Very few writers are so "good" that a publisher can wait and wait for their next "good" book. Contracts can easily be cancelled when the author doesn't meet their obligations.

kal-el said:

Really? But say if you are really talented and your first book does very well, however you can't write fast enough for the satisfaction of your publisher? Wouldn't they just wait for you if they knew how good you are?

Is time really that essential for a great writer?

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Why should they wait for you when there are writers who are just as good at writing -- or better -- and who will produce several books per year? Publishing is a business, and the bean-counters know which option is apt to earn more money for everybody involved in the endeavor. Publishing is also a business with limited capital to risk. They are much more likely to give money to those who can be consistent and predictable than to those who are good, but flakey. One is a sound business move. The other is not. Again: PUBLISHING IS A BUSINESS. It is not a charity case. And it is only somewhat about finding and promoting great art. "Somewhat" means "to a very, very tiny degree." First, foremost, hanging over your head, crashing through your walls like the Kool-Aid man, PUBLISHING IS A BUSINESS. Those who fail to think of it as such will not succeed.

"They" will only wait for you if you develop the kind of fan following that will all but guarantee a very large number of readers most definitely will spend money on your book. Dan Brown and George R. R. Martin can get away with shirking deadlines because they've already made astronomical amounts of cash for their publishers. Robert Jordan didn't get called on dicking around for seven books because he made astronomical amounts of money for his publiher. You are not likely to make astronomical amounts -- at least, not for quite some time. Nearly every writer needs time, marketing, and lots of hard work to establish the kind of eager, frothy fan base that allows him to disregard deadlines.

Yes, time plays a huge role. Huge. As in, you don't have a lot of it to waste, so you'd better learn how to use it wisely, and produce as many great books as you can in as little of it as you can.

kal-el said:

I figured that, and it makes perfect sense. But would a publisher drop you because you were taking too long? Even if they have published your work before and done very well out of it?

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They might. It's in many contracts. And it has happened to writers before.

If the idea of writing for ten hours a day or more and producing to deadlines doesn't sound appealing to you, then writing professionally is not the right career for you.

Writing is a business. The Kool-Aid man is on the verge of punching through your sliding glass door right now, and he's going to yell OH YEAH in your face. Business. Job. Nine-to-fiver, except more hours, like any other. Nobody is interested in how brilliant you are. Yet. They might be after you've shown them how well you can sell.

Libbie said:

They might. It's in many contracts. And it has happened to writers before.

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Yep. Most, if not all, contracts have clauses in them about deadlines and what happens if the author cannot produce a book within the specified time period. And they will exercise that clause.

The notion of the author with "writer's block" who "can't produce" and spends hours and hours banging out crap is a very romanticized, Hollywood thing. The vast majority of working writers do not operate like that. Few editors have the budget or patience for high-maintenance writers.

If you sign a contract that says you owe Publisher X a book in twelve months, you'd better turn it in in eleven months and thirty days or less.

That's how it's done, my friend! It's hard work. Lots and lots of hard/smart work.

No, how many does it take to get a little house in Savannah, Georgia? And two dogs.

And just let me tell you, it can be a bitch getting something to press. I work for a catalog company, and woe is me if I miss a deadline. The printer is not gonna have his monster, building size press sit idle, your ass goes to the back of the line, and you'll get your catalog when you get your catalog. I am sure it is the same with book printing.

There are no magic answers in writing. What works for someone like Stephen King won't work for me. What worked for me won't work for you. There are too many factors, too many variables to even try to come up with a reasonable answer for this question.

In the end, why fixate on it? Just write. For every hour you waste posing questions that don't have answers, you could be adding words to your WIP. Write the story FIRST. Then rewrite it. Then rewrite it again. Then get it betaed. Then rewrite it again. Then query it to agents. While you're querying, start on your new project. Wash, rinse repeat until you reach your goal. All the rest of this is nothing but a colossal waste of time until you've sold that first manuscript and have some realistic basis to build upon.

Okay, really, facetious motivational Kool-Aid man in correct manuscript format aside:

kal-el, in your various posts in this thread and others, you seem to be desperately searching for some kind of assurance that it's likely that you can be an instant hit -- the kind of writer who scores big on his first book and can write for pleasure ever after, while earning a ton of money at the same time. Or even enough money to keep yourself in Spaghetti-Os and shoe leather for the rest of your life. You seem to be almost insisting that somebody validate your impression that you have a chance at being the exception to the rule.

Maybe you do. That is possible. It's also possible to win at roulette in Vegas. But if you're a smart gambler, you always play the odds, and you never bet against the house. The numbers are not on the side of your fantasy. That's what we're all trying to tell you. The overwhelming majority of really successful writers got there by working smart and by treating it not as a fantasy but as a business. Maybe some day you'll be able to blow off deadlines and rest on your laurels. That day is not likely to come until you've put in a good decade of nose to the grindstone.

And that's all she wrote.

Man I'm glad I read this entire thread. Thanks to you all for the inside track.

There's no inside track to "Just write." Unfortunately, working in this business is, in a lot of ways, just like working in any other. You have to WORK, a lot, and produce ever more as you continue through your career.

IceCreamEmpress said:

No, I get the point you are trying to make.

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Not really.

Writing is a very, very hard business. All your plans and hard work--years and years of hard work--can be lost in an instant of doubt.

It's easy to write a novel, or two, or three, or four. Any writer can do it. What's hard is to go on, after your first rejection, after your hundredth. After your first novel doesn't sell enough and you find yourself hunting a new agent, a new publisher. After your second novel bombs, and your third is a victim of downsizing before it ever sees print.

That's the hard part of being a professional writer. Not the writing, or the planning, or the risk assesment, or the strategizing. All that is child's play.

Writers doubt themselves all the time. I'd guess even really good authors. I imagine you can have twenty books published and a really harsh review could still make you wonder. I'm sure there are some people who are self-confident, and there is certainly evidence of some writers thinking they're God, but I think most people wonder and at least occasionally doubt.

An instant of doubt isn't going to make a bestselling author not a bestselling author. It might make him/her decide to write a different book instead, or might mean they spend a day or a week or a month doubting themselves and then get over it and nothing changes. It might mean that they work extra hard on the manuscript and turn out something even better than anything else they've done so far.

Did you know that nerves/confidence works on a bell curve with performance? People who are exceedingly nervous/lack any confidence whatsoever don't perform well because they're so caught up in nerves/doubt they don't get anything done. People on the opposite extreme also don't perform as well because they're so confident they don't actually try as hard as they should. In terms of writing, this would be the person (I've known a few) who is convinced that their first draft is brilliance, that every agent should want to pick it up, and that they'll be an instant bestseller/Nobel prize winner (this is not an exaggeration, I've known people who say things like this). The ones who perform best are those in the middle, those with a bit of doubt/nerves, but not so much that it's disabling. This is basic psychology.

Yes, writers have to be persistent in the face of doubt, but a writer also has to be able to look at those hundreds of rejections and recognize that maybe there's a reason for it. Maybe they were rejected hundreds of times because their writing just wasn't good enough yet. Overconfidence can be just as debilitating in this case as lack of confidence is for a person who gets those hundred rejections and gives up. The overconfident person will not be willing to recognize that maybe they are, in fact, part of the problem.

Also, I think it depends on who you are. Rejections don't really bug me. I just got a full rejection and even that didn't bug me. I sent out another query. Does that mean it won't sting when I have to trunk this book with my favorite character ever? Nope, but I imagine I'll get over it pretty quick. What was a lot harder was writing the book itself (took a very, very long time), and then the months of doing nothing but editing, cutting, and getting critiques from beta readers trying to improve to make it good enough to send out. Going through lists of hundreds of agents and trying to find the best fits, and making my chart, and all the time I spent on that was even harder for me than getting rejected.

I'm hopeful. That's the difference here. Do I think my current work on submission will get very far? Nope, not really. What I do think is that my next one probably will, and if not that one the next, and then I can revisit my favorite. I'm hopeful that I will be good enough, and it's hope that carries me on. But it's also realistic hope. Would I love to one day be a bestseller that might be able to do this for a living? Goodness yes. Am I going to work toward that? Yup. But my hope is that I'm going to one day be published, and that my hard work and talent will be enough to get me through sticky times (and you know, the inevitable collapse of society ).

Overconfidence is dangerous. Hope is not.

As others have said, there is absolutely and utterly no way whatsoever to know if you'll ever be able to quit your day job to write full-time. If that's your long-term goal, then you need to start doing things now that will position you to be able to do it, should your writing ever sell enough.

#1: Buy a house or flat and pay it off by making large extra payments. Chances are that housing is your largest monthly payment. Lose it, and you can reduce your income needs dramatically. This also gives you real-life practice in living on less money.

#2: After paying off your house, sock the money you were using to make the extra payments away into savings to built your nest egg.

#3: Once your outgoings are reduced to the bare minimum to support your desired lifestyle and you have at least a year's expenses in saving, preferably two years', go part-time.

During all this, write. Lots. Rewrite. Even more. Get your work circulating, and hope you get lucky enough to land a manuscript on an agent's or editor's desk right when they were looking for exactly that thing. (This is one of the numerous variables you can't control.)

Finally, plan the rest of your life as if you'll never sell a single piece. Hope, dream, and work hard for it, but don't plan on it, for therein lies the way to madness. Hell, if you can get yourself in a position to be able to support yourself happily while working part-time, you'll be the envy of most of your friends without even taking writing into consideration.

There are only so many pieces of the 'quitting my day job to write full-time' plan that you can actually control. So control those. But don't make life-plans based on factors over which you have no control.

BTW, I have five books out, four YA novels and a co-ghostwritten memoir. I don't make anything like enough money to quit, but having done steps 1-3 above, I'm getting ready to go part-time in a few more months. Woo hoo!

Terie said:

As others have said, there is absolutely and utterly no way whatsoever to know if you'll ever be able to quit your day job to write full-time. If that's your long-term goal, then you need to start doing things now that will position you to be able to do it, should your writing ever sell enough.

#1: Buy a house or flat and pay it off by making large extra payments. Chances are that housing is your largest monthly payment. Lose it, and you can reduce your income needs dramatically. This also gives you real-life practice in living on less money.

#2: After paying off your house, sock the money you were using to make the extra payments away into savings to built your nest egg.

#3: Once your outgoings are reduced to the bare minimum to support your desired lifestyle and you have at least a year's expenses in saving, preferably two years', go part-time.

During all this, write. Lots. Rewrite. Even more. Get your work circulating, and hope you get lucky enough to land a manuscript on an agent's or editor's desk right when they were looking for exactly that thing. (This is one of the numerous variables you can't control.)

Finally, plan the rest of your life as if you'll never sell a single piece. Hope, dream, and work hard for it, but don't plan on it, for therein lies the way to madness. Hell, if you can get yourself in a position to be able to support yourself happily while working part-time, you'll be the envy of most of your friends without even taking writing into consideration.

There are only so many pieces of the 'quitting my day job to write full-time' plan that you can actually control. So control those. But don't make life-plans based on factors over which you have no control.

BTW, I have five books out, four YA novels and a co-ghostwritten memoir. I don't make anything like enough money to quit, but having done steps 1-3 above, I'm getting ready to go part-time in a few more months. Woo hoo!

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Great advice!

Most books sell less then 6000 copies, and at 12% of a standard pb cover price of 6.99 a writer would need to be selling ALL copies of FIVE books a year to earn £20k.

Think about it.

There is one thing missing in this discussion. Quitting your day job isn't irreversible. Probably a lot of people who haven't checked off everything on Terie's list could afford to quit their jobs and live off a decent advance for a year, trying to get another book under contract before the money runs out. And when the money is gone, there's no law against going back into the full-time or part-time job market.

Obviously, there is risk in this. Some careers are easier to re-enter than others, and I wouldn't try it without at least one contract. It sounds a lot different to go into a job interview and say you took off a year to get your book published than to say you did it to work on your unpublished novel.

Writing is not just a business, it's also a job. I have a job writing to deadlines right now. I'm very good at what I do. Would I get fired if I consistently missed major deadlines? You bet I would. In a heartbeat. Would a novelist get dropped for missing deadlines? You bet he would. In a heartbeat.

kellion92 said:

There is one thing missing in this discussion. Quitting your day job isn't irreversible. Probably a lot of people who haven't checked off everything on Terie's list could afford to quit their jobs and live off a decent advance for a year, trying to get another book under contract before the money runs out. And when the money is gone, there's no law against going back into the full-time or part-time job market.

Obviously, there is risk in this. Some careers are easier to re-enter than others, and I wouldn't try it without at least one contract. It sounds a lot different to go into a job interview and say you took off a year to get your book published than to say you did it to work on your unpublished novel.

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In Ireland public employees are entitled to take career breaks of a period up to 5 years with a guarantee that they will have a job when they return.

CaroGirl said:

Would a novelist get dropped for missing deadlines? You bet he would. In a heartbeat.

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I would say "could", not "would".

But that might just be my blown-deadlines-in-the-double-digits talking.

It certainly depends on the track record of the novelist and whether it was an isolated incident.

I know a writer who blew a deadline for a trilogy, kept the advance money and still gets work. Not from that particular publisher, but still...